Pakistani Minister Survives Attempt on Life

QUETTA, Pakistan – Gunmen ambushed the motorcade of the top government official in Pakistan's southwestern Baluchistan (search) province on Monday, killing a policeman and injuring two other officers, police and security officials said. The politician escaped unharmed.

The attack occurred on a road near Khuzdar, a town in Baluchistan that had been the scene of an earlier attack on army soldiers, said Tariq Javed, the local police chief. Chief Minister Jam Mohammed Yousuf, the head of government for the province, was not injured in the attack, Javed said.

"He is safe. He was returning from Khuzdar to Quetta," said Abdur Rauf Khan, the top security official in Baluchistan province. He said one man was arrested after the shooting.

There was no immediate word on a motive, but it seemed unlikely to have any links to international terrorism. Pakistan's prime minister-designate survived an assassination attempt on Friday that has been blamed on Al Qaeda (search).

Yousuf was returning from a visit to the site of an ambush Sunday on Pakistani troops in Khuzdar. Five soldiers and a civilian driver were killed in that attack.

A man claiming to speak for a little-known group calling itself "Baluchistan Liberation Army" had claimed responsibility for the attack on the soldiers and warned the government not to set up new army garrisons in Baluchistan, a southwestern province of which Quetta (search) is the capital.

In separate telephone calls to several newspapers in Quetta, the group's purported spokesman, Mir Azad Baluch, warned of new attacks if the government did not scrap plans to build new army bases.